A slacker's misadventures

Over the years, such diverse characters as Robert Preston in The Last Starfighter, Dexter Douglas in Freakazoid! and Jeff Bridges in Tron: Legacy all taught us the same lesson: It’s shockingly easy to blur the lines between the ones and zeroes in a computer game and the actual life we imagine ourselves to be living outside of it. In You, novelist Austin Grossman doesn’t just blur...

No criminal mastermind left behind

Let us celebrate, just for a moment, those evil geniuses among us whose perpetually foiled schemes have added such a piquant spice to life on this third stone from a nondescript yellow sun. Their names ring out like an infernal Who's Who: Ming the Merciless. Lex Luthor. Red Skull. Gorzo the Mighty. Brainiac. Green Goblin. The Riddler. Sinestro. Rush Limbaugh. Distilling the motley spectrum of...